After almost 6 months with this car, it picked up its first door ding, when my husband took it to the post office a few days ago -- he said when he came out, he saw a car with what looked like a recent Earl Sheib paint job, red, speeding out of the lot, when he first saw it there was a big chunk of red paint on the drivers side rear door, bottom half (below the ridge); by the time he got home, most of the paint must have flaked off, it was mostly gone, he cleaned up what was left as best he could with some hand cleaner. It's really not that noticable, quite small, there is a tiny ding, with small scratch and very faint remnants of the red paint. Where's the best place to take something like this -- a dealer, so they can get the matching paint? Obviously it wouldn't be a paintless dent removal, I've seen some ads for places that do those. Anyplace good in San Diego? What kind of cost? Probably won't get it taken care of right away; someone at work says her husband has someone come out to their house to take care of dings, but does it when it's picked up a few, 2 or 3.

Dent Wizard in NJ. They came HIGHLY recommended and did an excellent job. Not sure if they're out on the West coast though.
If it's just a tiny scratch I would probably stick with PDR and do a minor touch up on the scratch. NOTHING like a factory paint job.

A PDR can be used to remove the dent by a bodyshop and so save you £££ (or $$$) before they then repaint. However, they cannot always gain access to the area to actually push the dent out.

Last year I had a couple of fairly small dents put in the passenger door by a pebble or something kicked up by another car when parked near a beach. The bodyshop were going to use PDR techniques to push the dent out and then respray. But as the dents were in line with the door handle they couldn't gain access to push them out. They therefore had to strip down the whole of the interior door trim etc to get at the inside, adding a day to the repair time.

I was ready for a bit of a fight on price, but they did it for the same price that they had originally quoted. It may have helped that the bosyshop is attatched to the dealer that I bought from, but getting a quote and not an estimate to rectify the damage certainly puts you in a stronger position should the work become more complicated than they had allowed for.

For comparison, the PDR alone would have been about £75 (approx $130), but as soon as painting got involved it became £280 (approx $490).

Expensive, but they have done a great job, spraying both doors to blend the paint. I could only tell exactly where they had sprayed when I washed the car next and could spot the section that didn't have a layer of Carnuba wax to really bead the water. After washing and waxing you'd never know that any work had been done there.